Aharon Appelfeld

Biography

Appelfeld was born in the village of Zhadova near Czernowitz, Romania, now Ukraine. In 1940, when he was eight years old, the Nazis invaded his hometown and his mother was killed. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a concentration camp in Ukraine. He escaped and hid for three years before joining the Soviet army as a cook. After World War II, Appelfeld spent several months in a displaced persons camp in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in 1946, two years before Israel's independence. He was reunited with his father after finding his name on a Jewish Agency list. The father had been sent to a ma'abara (refugee camp) in Be'er Tuvia. The reunion was so emotional that Appelfeld has never been able to write about it.